10. the Case Against Non-Moral Blame
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Forthcoming in the Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 Please cite published version 10. The Case against Non-Moral Blame Benjamin Matheson and Per-Erik Milam 1. Introduction In 1994, Italy faced Brazil in the final of the World Cup. Italy reached the final largely due to a series of spectacular performances by Roberto Baggio, Il Divin Codino, who had scored five of their six goals in the knockout stages of the tournament. However, the final remained scoreless after 90 minutes of normal play and 30 minutes of extra time. It would come down to penalties. Baggio stepped up to take the last penalty for the Azzurri…and sent it soaring over the bar. Italy lost and Baggio was blamed by Italy fans around the world. The iconic photograph of the 1994 World Cup is of Baggio, seen through the empty net, standing deJected at the penalty spot. Such blame is a familiar part of life. Baggio failed and he was blamed for his failure. However, his failure was not a moral one, so the blame he received appears to be non-moral blame. Such cases are not unusual: Just as we blame athletes for poor performance, we blame artists for bad or boring art, scientists for faulty research, and voters for flawed reasoning. Philosophical discussion has tended to focus on moral blame—investigating the appropriateness of blaming the malicious, the ignorant, the negligent, and the reckless— while non-moral blame has received much less attention.1 At the same time, non-moral blame seems widespread and widely accepted—tolerated at least, but often embraced—in everyday life. In this paper, we consider the case for non-moral blame. We have two mains aims. One is to understand our actual practice of non-moral blame and how it’s Justified by its 1 Many distinguish moral from non-moral blame (Anscombe 1958, Press 1969, Watson 1996, Eaton 2008, Rorty 2010, Shoemaker 2015, Luthra 2016, Peels 2016, Archer and Ware 2018, Björnsson 2017), but only a few investigate it further (Tollefsen 2017, Brown 2018, Nelkin 2020, Shoemaker ms). 1 Forthcoming in the Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 Please cite published version practitioners. Another is to determine whether non-moral blame can actually be Justified, whether in its current form or in any form. We argue that it is never Justified—i.e. it’s never a morally permissible response to a non-moral failure. In §2, we explain what blame is. In §3, we explain how non-moral blame differs from moral blame. In §4, we argue that many (perhaps most) apparent cases of non-moral blame are actually cases of moral blame. In §5, we argue that even if non-moral blame is pro tanto permissible, because its target is blameworthy for their substandard non-moral performance, it often (perhaps usually) fails to meet other permissibility conditions, such as fairness or standing. In §6, we go further and challenge the claim that non-moral blame is ever even pro tanto permissible. We consider a number of arguments in support of non-moral obligations and show that all of them fail to establish plausible obligations. 2. What is blame? People react to objectionable behavior in many different ways. Suppose a coworker mistreats you. They are unprofessional and disrespectful; their behavior is rude, thoughtless, and demonstrates a lack of concern about your interests and well-being. Your reactions may include: i. identifying the person as the cause of the behavior ii. evaluating their behavior negatively, as substandard iii. being displeased or dissatisfied with their behavior iv. expressing your displeasure or dissatisfaction in words or behavior v. getting upset about their wrongful behavior (e.g. feeling angry or frustrated) vi. expressing your anger in words or behavior (e.g. by telling them off, refusing to interact with them, or demanding an apology) 2 Forthcoming in the Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 Please cite published version vii. using informal social punishment (e.g. warning others against them or excluding them) All of these reactions can be reasonable and valuable, but not all of them are blame. Distinguishing blame is important because it is often mistaken for other reactions and vice versa. Blame is more than merely identifying the person as the cause of the bad act and evaluating the act as blameworthy, wrongful, or otherwise substandard (Coates and Tognazzini 2013, Nelkin 2017). For example, we might appraise a child or a historical figure as blameworthy but not blame them. And displeasure simply represents one’s experience of an event or action as unenjoyable or bad in some respect. One’s displeasure while listening to Rotting Christ’s album Non Serviam is a reason to not go to their concert, but it doesn’t make any demands on the band to cease playing, touring, and recording. Blame, by contrast, makes a demand on its target to have behaved differently—e.g. that Rotting Christ not have made that album. Moreover, while expressing negative evaluations and displeasure may sometimes hurt their recipient, blame differs in that the sting of blame is part of its purpose. This is so even if one doesn’t intend for blame to hurt or if the blame is private (Macnamara 2015). One can negatively evaluate or express displeasure about a person’s behaviour—“I wish he hadn’t done that; it’s made for a very awkward working environment”—but still not blame the person. Blame, then, is a response to behaviour that appears to culpably fail to meet a standard that one is obliged to meet and it does more than grade or express displeasure about that failure. It is controversial what else is required for blame. For some, blame consists in a Judgement by which one holds an agent’s poor quality of will against them (e.g. Hieronymi 2004), or about whether one deserves to feel guilty (e.g. Carlsson 2017), or an emotional response like anger, resentment, or indignation (e.g. Wallace 1994), while for others it requires recognition of a change in the relationship between the blamer and the blamed (e.g. 3 Forthcoming in the Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 Please cite published version Scanlon 2008), or protest against mistreatment and a demand for due regard (e.g. Smith 2012). Still other accounts understand blame in terms of its communicative role or function (e.g. McKenna 2012). For example, one might think that any response to wrongdoing that encourages or prompts remorse in the offender is blame. Whichever account one favours, items (i-iv) on the above list would seem not to count as blame, at least not on their own. Note that this paper takes the ethics of blame seriously in that it assumes that blame can be morally impermissible. This entails three commitments: 1) that blame is morally bad because it is potentially harmful; 2) that this moral badness is not necessarily counterbalanced by other considerations, like fittingness; and 3) that one often has the control necessary to avoid or cease blaming, because one has such control either over instances of blame or over one’s disposition to blame. To reJect an ethics of blame is to reJect a central kind of objection we have to reckless, unfair, excessive, and presumptuous blame. 3. What is non-moral blame? Our practice of non-moral blame seems parallel to our practice of moral blame and it therefore seems reasonable to assume that non-moral blame, like moral blame, is often permissible. Everyday conversations presuppose non-moral value, obligations, and responsibility. One can react to non-moral failures in any of the ways described above, Just as one can to a moral failure. If moral blame is a response to culpable moral failures (e.g. breaking a promise), then non-moral blame is a response to a culpable failure to meet a non- moral standard (e.g. failing to make a penalty kick). They differ in that they respond to moral 4 Forthcoming in the Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 Please cite published version and non-moral failures, respectively. They are similar in other respects, including the potential to harm.2 Standards exist for each non-moral domain. We will focus on athletic, aesthetic, and epistemic domains. We already described the athletic blame directed at Roberto Baggio for missing his penalty kick, but we can also consider cases of aesthetic and epistemic blame. Aesthetic Blame: The audience at the 2019 Bayreuth Festival loved almost everything about the innovative performance of Tannhäuser. Everything except Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev. After foot-stomping acclaim for the director, the lead soprano, and the rest of the cast, the audience booed Gergiev “with an anger that seemed to express more than displeasure” (Swed 2019). Epistemic Blame: Royce, Eve, and Pierre are hours into a board game. The game is far from over, but Royce’s position is strong. However, Pierre proceeds to make a series of basic strategic errors and, because of the turn order, Eve is able to take advantage of his mistakes to Royce’s detriment. Royce attempts to claw his way back into a defensible position, but there is little he can do in response to Pierre’s careless mistakes and Eve’s capitalizing on them. Eve wins the game and, while both beat Pierre, both also blame him for his poor strategic choices, which have ruined the game for all of them. 2 Some claim that blame is essentially moral, which implies that non-moral blame is impossible. Their arguments understand blame in terms of the reactive attitudes and view reactive attitudes as reactions to moral failures, prescribed by the blamer’s acceptance of particular moral norms and imply Judgments of moral wrongdoing (Williams 1985: 177 and 193; Gibbard 1990: 47; and Darwall 2006: 94).